God always heals

 

I don’t know why Luke’s telling of the paralytic man and his friends has always been a challenge for me to reflect on in the past, but it has.  That is, until today, when I put myself into the story on a personal level to see what I could come up with (Luke 5:17-26).

I imagined myself as that man, lying miserably on my mat at home.  Suddenly, my friends burst into the house with stories of a miracle healer who could make me walk.  Brimming with excitement, they picked up my mat and started running through the rough stone streets, causing me to hang on for dear life. When we reached the house where Jesus was, there were so many people we couldn’t get in.  Somehow, my determined friends managed to climb up onto the roof, me and my mat in tow!  They started literally ripping the roof apart until they had a big enough hole, and then breathlessly lowered me down until I was face-to-face with Jesus.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just stared at Him, waiting for His words, and wondering how this was all going to happen.  And what did I hear? “Your sins are forgiven.”  I was dumbfounded.  I thought He was going to make me walk!  What did He mean, my sins are forgiven?  I had been paralyzed since birth.  What sin?  I have to admit, it was a momentary let down. 

But then it hit me.  I thought about the sick, dying, and grieving people I’ve met throughout my life, and especially those who lived with disabilities.  Combining their experience with the gospel story, I re-imagined an entirely different possibility.

This time, when Jesus said those words, for the first time in my life, I realized there was someone who looked at me and didn’t see a disability.  I recognized His insightful wisdom that the kind of healing I really needed was not outward and physical, but interior and more deeply rooted.  I needed to be healed of the pain I had caused others when I took my frustration out on them, healed of my lack of acceptance of myself, healed of the guilt I felt when I considered myself little more than a burden, and healed of my distancing from God when I blamed God for my circumstances.  Instead of being angry, my heart was pierced, I felt completely loved just as I was, and I cried for joy.

Of course, that wasn’t enough for the bystanders, who loudly refused to believe that Jesus could forgive sins.  So He acquiesced and said, “Rise, pick up your mat, and go home.”  And that’s exactly what I did.  I didn’t get up and throw a party.  In fact, the story seems almost anti-climactic, and perhaps at that point it was.  Perhaps I had been healed in the most important ways; and being able to walk was just the ‘icing on the cake’– nice, but not so necessary anymore.  So I unceremoniously walked home praising God.

There are many lessons in this story.  One that is often overlooked is exactly the point of my reflection: When we pray for healing, God always heals.  But He heals us in the ways we most need healing, and those may not be physical healings at all.  Sometimes we need a healing of relationships, or healing from hurt and abuse, or spiritual healing, or even healing into a peaceful death.  So when we pray, we need to allow God to act as only God knows how.  We need to allow God to heal us and our loved ones where we most need it, rather than in the very narrow definition of healing that we intend.

A couple of other thoughts also come to mind as I reflect on this story:  What are friends for, if not to risk a danger of falling through the roof or incurring the cost of repairing the same, simply to help another human being know the joy of being whole in God's presence?

In our broken world, filled with hate, division, prejudice, and violence, we need healing more than ever, and I dare say, the type of healing we most need is rarely physical.  In fact, if all those hurting, afraid, broken people who feel justified or compelled in carrying out abuse, exclusion, and violence were healed in their hearts, our society and world would be a much different place.

And which was greater—the cure of the paralytic or the forgiveness of his sins?  What greater love can we show one another than the love of forgiveness?

This Advent, then, as we work to birth Christ in our world, let’s join together to pray that all people may be healed where they most need healing, that they may be made whole and brought into the awareness of God’s love for them and for all people.  Let’s pray and let’s work tirelessly to be instruments of God’s healing and loving power.  If we start with ourselves and work out to encompass our neighborhoods, cities, nation, and globe, we may yet be able to make straight the path and see the glory of God on this earth.